Congress, Don’t politicize our Forests!

After the fires, our Northern California oak woodlands and forests need our protections more than ever. Much is known about how forests recover from fire; we need our governing officials to rely on the experts and not on political agendas. Our forests are integral to the health of our watersheds and to our water supply.

But Congress is ignoring this scientific information, favoring the logging industry over the environment and the public trust. On November 1, the House voted 232-188 to pass a bill deceptively named “Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2017.” House Speaker Paul Ryan asserted that bill HR2936 is needed to protect national forests “from the kind of devastation that California experienced.” The California fires were not in national forests. Furthermore, analysis shows that this bill not only takes money away from programs helping homeowners fireproof their homes, but it also sideswipes public involvement and oversight under the National Environmental Policy Act by creating an array of waivers of environmental review and eliminates the opportunity for citizens to hold the government accountable in the courts.

D-Representative Raúl Grijalva, the Ranking Member on the House Natural Resources Committee, describes the bill as a “shameful giveaway” to the logging business.

The bill flies in the face of current scientific studies that show that reducing environmental protections and increasing logging actually increases the intensity of fire when it comes, and that “snag forest habitat” is some of the most biodiverse and healthy wildlife habitat in the West.

WE NEED THE TREES FOR ECOLOGICAL REASONS. REMOVAL OF ACTUALLY DAMAGED TREES IS ONE THING BUT SWEEP CUTTING OF THE FORESTS AND HILLL SIDES CREATES MORE PROBLEMS THAN WE ALREADY HAVE.
WE SURVIVED THE RECENT CALIFORNIA FIRES, ALTHOUGH BARELY, AND DO NOT WANT TO SEE CUTTING OF TREES FOR LOGGING INTERSTS.

Patricia Damery

says on:

December 5, 2017 at 1:13 am

Thank you! We need people who understnd this! Some of our most biodiverse areas rich in wildlife are those which have been burned. Furthermore, the logging in the Sierra is not based on what we know about forest ecology but on logging interests. We need Congress to use scientific research in making decisions as large as what is essentially deforestation by logging.

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Established in January 2015 by neighbors from throughout the county to protect the quality of life for Napa County’s citizens and the rich biodiversity of our natural environment, known as ‘The Commons’. We joined together to confront the challenges of inappropriate development in the Agricultural Preserve, the Agricultural Watershed and in our cities and towns